NOT Doing A Seating Chart

I find the idea of only reserving seats for immediate family and wedding party insulting to guests. Are you also giving the VIPs better food? Complete choice of drinks, but wine and beer only for others.

Are you prepared to tell the aunt who thought she was close to you, nope, find a seat for yourself? Where do you draw the line, and who gets to tell people to move.

With no seating charts, people do not get to sit where they want. They sit where the find a seat. Someone sits by the mensroom or in the back.

I went to one, and at the end of the day it worked out, however, we were asked to move tables to accommodate the group that was trying to sit together.

I'm not doing a seating chart! I LOVE that it makes everyone so mad too. Do you girl. It's your day

I've never been to a wedding with fully assigned seating. We're not having a seating chart.

Leah, what makes you think we're mad?

The fact that you're challenging me when I didn't even mention your name at all says youre mad. Lol. Duh.

I'm only having around 70ish people and I'm having assigned tables. The only wedding that I've been to that didn't have assigned tables was extremely chaotic. I ended up skipping out on their buffet style dinner to reserve a table for the people that I came with. Some tables were less than half full but people who didn't know the people at those tables didn't want to sit with them. The tables weren't large enough for my family to all be at one table so the other half was all of the way across the room.

Ok, well fine then Leah. Moving on.

I've been to weddings where there was no seating chart and it was a mess. Guests moved tables to make them larger and then left chairs and place settings with no table. Now you have people "intruding" on a group (holding their place setting) and getting stink eye. We ended up without a table and had to hold our plate in our lap and our drink on the floor.

ETA: And by the way, the people moving the tables and giving stink eye were the couples family.

I'm pretty sure you just need a less shitty venue that is either all indoor our outdoor seating

We aren't doing one but our guest list is half your size. We will have 4 reserved tables for immediate family

NOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOOOO

@Leah why do you want your wedding guests to be mad at you?

Remember that feeling in the middle school cafeteria, when everyone was glaring at you and when you tried to sit, some girl would drawl, "this seat is saaaaved." Well, I guess if you were one of the cliquey mean girls, you might not remember, but anyway...

Seating charts help prevent your guests from having to relieve that experience, albeit ~20 years later in cocktail attire.

Having your wedding split up into two spaces is a terrible idea. There is no way to keep the people who have to sit outside from feeling like second class citizens. I looked at your venue and it's not a seamless inside/outside feel. The barn seats 200 people inside; that should be your max guest list number.

We are doing one. I have been to two (that I can think of) without seating charts. One of which was my brothers and another I was a BM. Even in those cases where I knew a great deal of the guests, it caused anxiety to have to find a table. It wasn't the norm in my town either really, but after having gone to others that went against this norm and had them it was such a great experience. I want to make sure my guests are relaxed.

That is a good question though. What will happen with the outside table if it rains?

Just putting this out there...I was scrolling through the thread and H asked me what I was reading, and when I told him the title, his reaction was "oh, no." I'm just gonna leave this here.

If the outside tables are so bad you don't want to assign them to anyone and feel it would make you selfish - it sounds like you were already selfish in picking this venue. You picked it for some reason that was NOT considering your guests comfort and seating options.

I will not have a seating chart... However we will only have 70 guests and I'll have 3 extra tables..

Don't worry about table assignments. I went to a wedding yesterday with 422 ppl and everyone found a seat within seconds. No chaos. The only chaos was when the coordinator tried to call ppl by name (from the rsvp list) in the cocktail area to find their card to find their seat in the ballroom. It was waisting so much time that some of the brides uncles told us just to enter the ballroom slowly and find a seat. Simple

ETA: I've only been to one wedding where there were assigned seats and I sat in the back corner with my brother and aunts. I couldn't see anything on the main floor and eventually getting and finding a new seat towards the end of the program. I'm not in elementary school where I need an assigned seat. Not a fan